Few figures in conservativism are more revered than Thomas Sowell. A free-market economist, social theorist and philosopher, Sowell’s work has spanned decades and influenced generations.
Sowell wrote a nationally syndicated column, authored dozens of books and dazzled television audiences time and time again with his common sense, anti-intellectual approach to political and cultural issues.
The following story is part of The Western Journal’s exclusive series “The Sowell Digest.” Each issue will break down and summarize one of Sowell’s many influential works.
Thomas Sowell reserved some of his harshest criticism for former President Barack Obama.
In fact, some of that criticism showed how Obama’s foolish ideas likely would produce the circumstances that eventually made possible the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Sowell made this connection in an April 2014 opinion piece entitled, “How foreign is our policy?”
By the 6th year of his presidency, Obama had built a strange record on foreign policy.
In fact, Sowell noted that conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza had openly wondered whether Obama’s otherwise inexplicable behavior in foreign affairs might not have reflected the 44th president’s deep-rooted antipathy toward the United States.
Sowell called this a “disturbing possibility” that fit with Obama’s “citizen-of-the-world conception of himself.” Perhaps Obama believed “that the United States already has too much power and needs to be deflated.”
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During the Cold War, America’s domestic critics often took this view. Jeane Kirkpatrick’s legendary “Blame America First” speech at the 1984 Republican Convention encapsulated that view to thunderous applause.
Obama, according to Sowell, fell under the “Blame America First” spell.
In this context, Obama’s treatment of Ukraine might have had long-term consequences.
The “Blame America First” crowd always insisted that the world would become more just if only the U.S. would disarm.
According to Sowell, Obama universalized this disarmament principle.
“Ukraine’s recent appeal to the United States for military supplies, with which to defend itself as more Russian troops mass on its borders, was denied by President Obama,” Sowell wrote.
“He is sending food supplies instead. He might as well send them white flags, to facilitate surrender.”
Here Sowell argued not for the unlimited supply of arms to Ukraine but against the same Obama disarmament principle that had left Ukraine vulnerable in the first place.
“Back in 2005, Sen. Barack Obama urged the Ukrainians to drastically reduce their conventional weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles and tons of ammunition,” Sowell noted. “Ukraine had already rid itself of nuclear missiles, left over from the days when it had been part of the Soviet Union.”
Alas, nuclear disarmament made nations “more vulnerable to those who are not peaceful.”
Modern readers, rightly angered by the U.S. government’s funding of the current Ukraine war, might react with skepticism.
Sowell, however, did not urge the Pentagon to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a money-laundering proxy war.
Instead, he simply argued that Ukrainians had a right to defend themselves against aggression.
Furthermore, he argued that well-armed nations have a better chance to deter hostile neighbors than weak ones do.
Thus, whatever one thinks of the bad actors involved in the current Ukraine situation, Sowell got it right. Disarmament left Ukraine vulnerable.
